Perfect Pancakes by Jamie Oliver

My mom sent me this Tweet from Jamie Oliver (celebrity chef extraordinaire) months ago, along with a care package of self-rising flour. Turns out it is the easiest way to make pancakes when you're craving them, and they always turn out fluffy and light! Try adding blueberries, chocolate chips, or other additions to customize to your tastes. Perfect!

Ingredients:

1 egg
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup milk (I use fat-free or 1%, lactose free milk by Lactaid)
Pinch of salt

Directions:

1.) Whisk ingredients together. Pour onto a hot griddle that's been lightly coated with canola oil (you can tell it's ready when a drop of water placed on the pan starts to sizzle). Allow the edges of the pancake to harden and then flip it. Cook another minute or so, checking the underside for doneness.

That's it!

I saved this recipe for Valentine's Day (I had a lot planned and didn't want to lose time on an extensive, complicated endeavor), and poured the pancakes into a silicon heart-shaped mold for a breakfast filled with love. And chocolate chips. It worked great and gave me plenty of time to set up gifts, make bacon (another way to show your love), and get ready for a date at Gameworks. But really, you can use these pancakes for any occasion!

Green Sour Cream Pound Cake for St. Pat's!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It's the one day out of the year where my baking can match my clothes. Green, after all, has always been my favorite color. This year St. Patrick's Day also fell within the week of Spring Break at the college where I work. It's fairly quiet on campus, which makes it the perfect time to bring in treats to colleagues who have been working so hard to make it to mid-semester.

So I knew I would be baking something green well before the day arrived. I just wasn't sure what. I wanted to make something from scratch and use the ingredients I had. I'm not sure how the idea of "pound cake" came into my head--it must have popped up in my Internet search for recipes using self-rising flour (I had a leftover container my mom gave me for pancakes). But most of the those self-rising baked goods also called for buttermilk--which I did not have. In my fridge, however, was a small tub of sour cream. I knew this could be a good substitution for some baked goods. In fact, a few donut recipes appeared when I modified my search for self-rising flour and sour cream. But I was most drawn to a post for Sour Cream Pound Cake from farmflavor.com. It might take a while to bake, but sounded super easy to put together. And the instructions on my green food coloring bottle said I only needed to add 1/2 teaspoon into any cake batter to get that green tint. Perfect! My St. Pat's Green Sour Cream Pound Cake was born.

Ingredients:

2 sticks of butter (16 Tablespoons), softened but not melted

3 cups sugar

5 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups self-rising flour (sifted)

8 oz. sour cream (I use Daisy Lite)

1/2 teaspoon liquid green food coloring (I used McCormick)

Optional strawberries, green, grapes, whipped cream, and green frosting to decorate

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a very large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together with an electric or stand mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each, then add the vanilla and mix again.

2.) Alternate adding flour and sour cream until all ingredients are combined. Add the green food coloring last, mixing until thoroughly combined.

3.) Pour the batter into your pan of choice (that's been heavily greased with butter/flour or nonstick cooking spray). The original recipe calls for an hour and a half bake time for a tube/bunt pan. For my shallow book-shaped pan (slightly larger than 9x13 inches) I had to cut that baking time down significantly, checking after 30 minutes (still too wobbly), and ultimately baking only about 40-45 minutes total, until the top and edges were slightly brown and a toothpick inserted into the center came out clean.

4.) Remove the cake from the oven and let cool to room temperature before refrigerating overnight. Serve the next morning with strawberries, GREEN grapes for St. Paddy's, and any whipped cream or icing you choose.

I was a little nervous bringing the finished product to work the next morning after baking. Would a green cake be appetizing? Would the center be too solid or not solid enough? Despite a clean toothpick test, I hadn't cut into the cake or baked any side cakes to try first since the batter was just barely enough to fill my pan. And I didn't want to ruin the look of the finished cake before my coworkers saw it.

Turns out I didn't need to worry! The cake received rave reviews by my supervisor, our administrative assistant, and all the librarians and staff that had a piece. Nearly half the cake was gone by lunch time! The center was moist, the flavor was sweet, and I now have a go-to pound cake recipe for any time of year!

Classic Cinnamon Rolls

In my family, I started a holiday tradition upon which we have cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning. And I bake them. The smell and the taste is wonderful to wake up to on such a special occasion, and it gives me something to do in the early hours I'm up before the rest of my family now that I'm past the age of present peeking (mostly). The last few years I've utilized pizza dough to create Easy Breezy Morning Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas breakfast--which are always fun to make, delicious to eat, and don't require yeast (so they get done a lot faster since the dough doesn't need time to rise). But before I discovered this pizza dough hack, I made my yeast-less cinnamon rolls with biscuit dough. And while that recipe has remained a family favorite for years--my handwritten version safely tucked within a fat, orange binder with other old school, paper recipes--I've never actually posted it here. But when this year's Christmas rolled around and I just couldn't find whole wheat pizza dough at my local grocery stores (or any pizza dough, really), I went back to the classic and made cinnamon rolls that hearkened to my early years as an unofficial baker. 

I'll call these my Classic Cinnamon Rolls. It turns out the original recipe (which I adapted slightly) comes from a Cooks Illustrated recipe by Raquel Pelzel, published May 2002 (That's where I got some of the language like "shaggy" dough and "wet sand"). My mom had copied the pages with diagrams to know how to shape the rolls correctly (which are probably safely tucked away within her own recipe binder). But since I don't have those original copies, special thanks to Ed Santiago for his recipe archive scans of the pages:

Ingredients:

For the dough:
Flour (for dusting)
2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 Tablespoons melted butter

For the filling:
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon melted butter

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for the dough. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the buttermilk and melted butter for the dough.

2.) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until a shaggy dough forms, about 30 seconds. Then knead the dough until it is smooth and not shaggy. Pat into a 12x9-inch rectangle and spray the top of the dough lightly with nonstick cooking spray.

3.) In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt for the filling. Add the melted butter and stir until the mixture resembles wet sand. Then take half the mixture and pat a thin layer onto the rectangle of dough, pressing down but not too deep.

4.) Roll the dough into a log, crimp the edges, and cut into your desired amount of cinnamon rolls. Lay them into a round cake pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and sprinkled with the other half of the filling mixture (save just a little to sprinkle on top of the rolls as well). Press the rolls flat and dust the tops with the cinnamon mixture.

5.) Bake the rolls for approximately 23 minutes, checking early for even browning. Remove from the oven, let cool at least 5 minutes and then ice with your favorite icing. If you don't have a recipe, it's easy to make!

From my previous cinnamon roll recipe, here's a simple Icing Recipe:

Combine 1 cup powdered sugar with 2 Tablespoons of your favorite milk-like product (soy creamer, buttermilk, half and half, or just plain milk). Be careful when you pour the sugar, then stir thoroughly. Drizzle over slightly cooled cinnamon rolls and you're done!

Now for some pictures of the process!

Yes, the outfit is a must!

Fall Fun Including Pumpkin Donuts!

It's true, I've been a little behind in my blog postings, but that doesn't mean I haven't been ready (as always) for fall (and pumpkin).

One need look no further than my recent grocery store purchases to confirm my commitment to all things pumpkin once late September rolls around. As I happily shared with a fellow pumpkin-loving Facebook friend, this season I've thus far sampled: pumpkin granola, yogurt, cream cheese, cake bars, black coffee (K-cup pods from Target), Starbucks lattes, waffles, pancakes, cereals, and M&Ms (pumpkin spice LATTE flavored).

Fall-themed cereals alone!

Then my mom purchased me this assortment from Trader Joe's:

Not all of these were spot on--I'm less impressed with the Nestle chips.

But the biggest foodie plans for the season revolved around my sort of annual Halloween party get-together of former coworkers (we try to do this every year). I love putting together a menu of fall and spooky-themed items, many of which I've employed in the children's department of the library and many that I've just made up on the spot. Caramel apples were a must, seeing as how I hadn't yet made any caramel apples this fall (and it was October already), and spider cookies (made from Oreo cookies dotted with candy eyes) was a fun delight I'd tried before. Running short of time, I bought a prepackaged Duncan Hines chocolate cupcake mix (dark chocolate fudge if I remember correctly), but I couldn't skimp on something pumpkin flavored. Usually I make a nice Pumpkin Dip with cream cheese, but this time I'd had an idea to do some sort of pumpkin cake for a long time. Inspired by the MyRecipes.com Boo-tiful Pumpkin Cake, I thought I'd go a little smaller scale with Pumpkin Donuts (hey, I had a donut pan and not a bunt cake pan). With a quick Internet search, I found a four and a half-star recipe for Glazed Pumpkin Donuts on AllRecipes.com that I quickly modified for my purposes.

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (sifted)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 and 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup pumpkin puree (I used Libby's Canned Pumpkin)

2 eggs

1/4 cup of milk (I used Fat-Free Lactose Free Milk)

1/4 cup butter, softened

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and spray your donut pan with nonstick cooking spray (you could try with a muffin pan, but it really helps to have a donut pan to make donuts).

2.) Sift the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and baking soda into a large mixing bowl. Add the canned pumpkin, eggs, milk, and softened butter. Stir to combine ingredients (an electric hand mixer on low speed was especially helpful) until the batter is thoroughly combined but not overmixed (just make sure there are no large lumps of butter left. Those were the hardest parts to break down).

3.) Pour the batter into the donut pan, filling almost to the top. Wipe away any excess batter around the edges with a paper towel (this will help the donuts look more uniform later). 

4.) Bake approximately 8-10 minutes (I started with 8 minutes but the donuts were not yet firm when I took them out--they should sort of spring back when touched rather than leave an impression. I baked for an additional 2 minutes until they started to brown around the edges just a tad).

5.) Remove the donuts from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before removing from the pan (otherwise they will stick to the pan and fall apart). Once the donuts are completely cooled, flip them over and frost them any way you like. I used Philadelphia Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese spooned into a plastic baggie with the tip cut off so I could draw little gourd-shaped lines on the donuts.

Optionally, you can also add a piece of green licorice (I used green apple Rips) to make a stem, though the licorice will make the rest of the donuts smell like green apple when you store them in the fridge. Yes, I learned all these the hard way.

I have to admit, despite my obvious bias to all things pumpkin, these were my favorite treats of the Halloween evening. They came out moist--even after being refrigerated overnight--paired well with the cream cheese, had a lovely flavor, and offered a nice contrast to all the chocolate on my table.

What other fall things have I baked lately and not blogged about? I admit, the list is limited to JELLO Jigglers attempted in a pan meant for cakes (miraculously, it worked!). But for me, Halloween is the big event of the season...until Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie comes along....

Nutella Brownies

Oh yes. You read that right. Nutella. And brownies. In the same sentence. In the same recipe. I must admit that I'd never really tried Nutella, though I've heard great things about it, especially from Italian chefs who cook with hazelnuts. Then one day I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed and saw one of those short recipe videos start to play: Three-Ingredient Nutella Brownies. I do like to keep things short and sweet, though I tend to get a bit skeptical of recipes with very few ingredients. Is it really possible to turn just three things into brownies? And awesomely delicious brownies at that? I had to experiment to find out.

When the time came to host a girls' movie night with my friends, I knew I had to make some kind of delicious dessert. I knew it had to be easy--I wouldn't have much time after work to prepare--and it had to be chocolate (Hey, what else would you pair with popcorn and wine?). What a perfect time to test out Nutella Brownies! I bought a jar of Nutella two days before the event and decided to bake the brownies the night before just in case it turned out that Nutella plus eggs plus flour did not equal delicious.

I didn't need to be worried.

Ingredients:

1 and 1/4 cups Nutella (chocolate-hazelnut spread. I used a whole 13 oz jar)
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour (as per usual, I used whole wheat pastry flour)

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Pour the entire jar of Nutella into a mixing bowl. Add the eggs and flour (sifted in if possible) and stir until all ingredients are combined. Caution: it will be thick.

2.) Pour the brownie batter into a square brownie pan that's been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray (the recipe from the video used a 9x13-inch cake pan, but I prefer squares for brownies and didn't think I had enough batter to fill a rectangle anyway).

3.) Bake for about 15 minutes. Remove the brownies from the oven to cool before cutting (you can also refrigerate them overnight and cut the next day).

These brownies may be a little low (no baking powder or soda to help them rise). They may be a little gooey (but that's personally my favorite kind). They will definitely be delicious.

So the main question that remains is, why wasn't I introduced to this delicious flavor of chocolate and hazelnut before?? I'm not a big chocolate person, but I am a big nut-butter person. Nutella seems to be the best of both worlds (I definitely licked my spoon after emptying the jar, and pretty much scraped the jar clean...). The brownies were a hit at movie night and I plan to repeat any recipes that are this easy to put together (so long as I keep my pantry stocked with Nutella. Shouldn't be hard).

Experiment success!

Go-To Banana Muffins!

I officially have a go to banana muffin recipe!  After many attempts to find the perfect combination, I realized that I could adapt my Spring Banana Bread recipe into muffin form and have since made Go-To Banana Muffins several times for parties, work events, and even gave the recipe as a bridal shower present. All I had to do was change brown sugar to white sugar, cut the baking time back, and add in chocolate chips or nuts as needed.

Ingredients:

2-3 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 and 1/2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup chocolate chips (or combination of chocolate chips and pecans, etc.)

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degree and line a muffin tin with paper (cupcake) liners. Spray lightly with cooking spray if the paper is strong enough.

2.) In a single bowl, mash the bananas with a fork, then stir in the melted butter, baking soda, and salt. Add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sift in your flour last, folding it slowly so that the flour fully incorporates into the mixture. Do the same for the chocolate chips, folding slowly until fully incorporated.

3.) Pour the batter into the muffin cups and bake for about 18 minutes (25 at the most, but 18 worked for me). Use a toothpick inserted into the center of a central muffin to check for doneness (if it comes out moist with crumbs on it, the muffins might need a little more time. If it comes out dry, you're good). Cool slightly, but serve warm. (Note: They also taste great cold since they're moist enough to not harden in the refrigerator, or they can be reheated in the microwave to maintain the original flavor).

I've received so many positive reviews for these muffins, and I absolutely love bananas, so I'll definitely be returning to this recipe over and over again!

Spring Banana Bread

It's the first weekend of Spring, and I've finally gotten caught up on this blog for the months I've missed. Though I didn't plan any specific baking for the new season, I felt like whipping up something in my kitchen again, and overripe bananas were just the inspiration I needed to make banana bread.

I've made many a banana bread in the past: Banana Pecan Muffins, Buttermilk Banana Bread, Banana Chocolate Bread, and even a failed attempt at Banana Muffies. All of them ended up tasting fine, but none were quite strong enough to be my "go-to" recipe every time (at least, not as memorable as I would have liked them to be). Thus, I turned to the Internet for help--especially since I had no buttermilk on hand and needed a recipe without it. One of the first results was a banana bread recipe from Simply Recipes that had no dairy other than butter and was advertised as "the most popular recipe on Simply Recipes, first posted 2005." Sounded like good reviews to me.

The execution of the banana bread was easy--I had all the ingredients on hand and could gather them quickly. I felt like making a loaf of bread rather than muffins, so I followed the original recipe, but decided to add brown sugar instead of white sugar for a little molasses flavor sweetness (And of course, I used my traditional whole wheat pastry flour in place of all-purpose).

Ingredients:

2-3 very ripe bananas, peeled (I had two small ones on hand)
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup of sugar (I used brown sugar)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 and 1/2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a metal or ceramic loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2.) In a single bowl, mash the bananas with a fork, then stir in the melted butter, baking soda, and salt. Add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sift your flour last, folding it in slowly so that the flour fully incorporates into the mixture.

3.) Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 45-55 minutes (The original recipe calls for an hour to an hour and 10 minutes, but my bread browned up just a little too much after 53 minutes. I forgot to check it earlier as the Simply Recipes method suggested). Use a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread to check for doneness (if it comes out moist with crumbs on it, the bread might need a little more time. If it comes out dry, you're good). Cool completely, remove from pan, and slice to serve.

Sadly, this banana bread came out a little more done than I had planned, dark brown across the top, but with a nice crunchy crust that was still appealing. And even though I waited until the bread had cooled before cutting it, the slices came out more than a little crumbly, making it harder to serve. I decided against bringing it to brunch, for fear of the slices falling apart. However, here at home my family and I have been perfectly satisfied munching on the pieces. Flavor wise, this recipe delivers. A warm slice with butter on top made for the perfect tasty snack, and even the crumbling slices were a nice combination of crunchy on the top but soft in the center. So I'll definitely give this recipe another go, perhaps with a few tweaks and a little less bake time, to see if it's the banana bread keeper I've been looking for.